In communicating by a symbolic language, such as Braille, the ability to communicate to both a visually impaired and a non-visually impaired individual is essential. In public places especially, important information displayed to the public must be recognizable by both the visually impaired and non-visually impaired alike. Tactile recognition languages, such as Braille, have been used in a very limited manner in public places such as hotels or restaurants, to aid the visually impaired in finding floors and rooms. For example, plates having Braille characters indicating room numbers or floor numbers are often fixed to walls of hallways or elevators. The difficulty of displaying Braille signs, and changing the display by non-Braille trained hotel or restaurant workers has proved to be an insurmountable problem.
Thus, prior art displays are fixed and are not easily interchangeable by both visually and non-visually impaired individuals to communicate different messages which can be recognized in public places both visually and by touch. These symbolic language displays are used when the information conveyed to the public does not have to be changed.
Devices exist which communicate tactilly recognizable characters, such as Braille characters and which can be selectably arranged to form words and phrases. However, such devices are essentially used for teaching Braille and are not suited for displaying and communicating messages in a public place. Furthermore, prior tactile recognition language devices do not communicate a visually recognizable message corresponding to the tactilly recognizable message.
Accordingly, what is needed is a tactilly and visually recognizable communication device with interchangeable characters for communicating and displaying messages to both the visually and the non-visually impaired. The characters should be positioned so that a visually impaired individual may tactilly recognize the characters and the message without moving the arranged characters. Further, the character should be arranged so that non-visually impaired individual may easily visually recognize the displayed message.